


Fencing

by SailorChibi



Series: Lovesquare 2019 Ficlet Expansions [5]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Has a Sweet Tooth, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Identity Reveal, F/M, Fluff, Hugging, Identity Reveal, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Finds Out First, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Identity Reveal, Oblivious Adrien Agreste, Plagg Is So Done, Plagg is a Little Shit, Post-Episode: s02 Syren, Secret Identity Reveal, awkward reveal, i remain unrepentant reveal trash, marinette dupain-cheng puns, marinette dupain-cheng tells adrien agreste, post reveal pre relationship, you can't tell me either one of them would be able to keep it a secret for more than five minutes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-09 04:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20498684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorChibi/pseuds/SailorChibi
Summary: It turns out that Adrien Agreste has a very distinctive and recognizable fencing style.





	Fencing

**Author's Note:**

> This is an expansion of my [Ladrien June Day 7: Fencing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19046746/chapters/45453415) ficlet.

Adrien was laying on his back on his bed, scrolling through his Tumblr feed, when he heard the quiet tapping at his window. He ignored it for a moment, thinking that it was a bird or a tree branch. But when the sound persisted, he rolled over in annoyance to see what was happening - 

And then promptly fell off the bed in shock.

The tapping stopped immediately. Laying face down on the floor, Adrien had a terribly vivid mental picture of Ladybug having seen his monumentally uncool faceplant, deciding that she regretted all her choices, and yo-yoing away. But when he pushed himself up, she was, amazingly, still there. Only now she looked really concerned and seemed like she was seconds away from breaking the glass to get in.

He clumsily got up and stumbled over to the window, unlatching it. His brain worked frantically: it was probably too late to try and pretend that hadn’t happened, but maybe Ladybug would be kind enough to ignore it -

“Are you okay?!” she blurted out the second the window opened.

Or not.

“I’m fine,” Adrien said, silently resigning himself to spending hours beating himself up about this later.

Ladybug pursed her lips, staring at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you sure? I think you hit your cheek.”

Automatically, Adrien lifted a hand to his cheek. It _did_ hurt, and his father was going to be pissed if it bruised, but he pasted on a smile. “It’s nothing. What brings you by?”

“Oh.” Ladybug’s cheeks colored slightly. Now she looked nervous. Shyly, she said, “I… I saw you win your fencing match today. I wanted to congratulate you and bring you something.”

“You were _there_? You _brought_ me something?!” Adrien wasn’t sure which fact amazed him more.

“Yup. Here.” Ladybug bent and picked up a bakery box that Adrien hadn’t noticed before. He recognized it immediately. Marinette sometimes brought pastries in for their class as a treat, and the new, distinctive teal blue box with the gold ‘D-C’ embossed on top was a familiar, pleasant sight indeed.

“Th-thank you!” Adrien stammered, stunned. He took the box but didn’t do anything with it just yet. He still couldn’t believe she’d gone through so much trouble for _him_.

Ladybug smiled at him, her eyes twinkling. “Well, open it!”

“Okay…” Still in disbelief, Adrien obeyed. He found himself staring at a delectable assortment of pastries, including several passion fruit macarons, surrounding a miniature raspberry, white chocolate cheesecake. His mouth immediately watered.

“Do you like it?” Ladybug asked softly.

“I love it! White chocolate raspberry is my -”

“Favorite kind of cheesecake. I know.”

Adrien looked at her, confused. “You know?”

For a moment, she turned her head away. Adrien stood in confused silence, watching her. He knew Ladybug well enough to know that she was very nervous, and that she seemed to be working herself up for something, but he didn’t know what. All he could do was stand there and wait, giving her the opportunity to speak whenever she was ready. And at last, she did.

“Like I said, I was there at your match today,” Ladybug said. Her voice was a little shaky but determined. “You… you have a very distinctive fencing style.”

Adrien’s eyebrows furrowed. “I do?”

She smiled again, this time to herself, and finally looked back at him. “Yeah, _Chaton_, you do.”

He nearly dropped the box. Only the realization that all the pastries and the cheesecake would be ruined if he did kept him from letting go. He stared at her in shock, jaw dropped. Ladybug giggled at his reaction.

“Don’t worry. Only someone who spends as much time watching Chat Noir _and_ Adrien Agreste would figure it out, and no one spends nearly as much time doing that as I do,” she said, blushing.

“You… you… wait, what?” Adrien said, still dumbfounded. “I thought – you always said -”

“I know. I didn’t try to figure it out. It just hit me today and then I couldn’t shut my brain up and I kept thinking of all the similarities and the more I tried not to think about it the more I did and -”

“It’s okay,” Adrien said, gathering himself together long enough to cut off her rambling. He wasn’t sure how long she could go without breathing in the suit, but he wasn’t willing to test it.

Ladybug took a deep breath. “And then… I thought that if I knew… well… maybe fair is fair.”

“You’re… really?! Come in, you can detransform here!” Adrien said, barely able to contain his excitement, and she giggled wildly.

“Non, _mon minou_. I had to figure it out and so do you.”

“But Ladybug,” Adrien whined. Honest to god whined. But this felt like torture! He’d tried to deal with his desire to know who Ladybug was, but now… now the information he’d yearned for was so close. It might take him ages to put together all the clues and figure it out, and he didn’t know if he could wait that long.

“Nope,” Ladybug said mischievously. “Don’t worry, Adrien. I’ve already given you a _paws_-itively _purr_-fect clue. I baked it myself. You just need to look at your claws.”

Adrien groaned in protest, pulling an exaggerated pleading face. She just laughed and leaped backwards off the ledge, throwing out her yo-yo long before she hit the ground. It wrapped around a distant point and sent her sailing over the gates and out of sight. He watched her go with longing.

_I baked it myself. Just look at your claws._

Her words ran through his mind again. Slowly, he looked down at the unmistakable bakery box he was clutching in his hands. Several things tumbled through his brain all at once, culminating in an undeniable conclusion. His eyes widened in realization.

“Holy shit!”

“Finally figured it out, did you?” Plagg drawled behind him.

Adrien whirled around to see that, at some point during his and Ladybug’s conversation, his kwami had emerged from wherever he’d hidden and was now splayed across Adrien’s pillow, eating a chunk of Camembert. All of Adrien’s usual protests about Plagg eating cheese on his pillow dried up as he grasped what Plagg was saying and gave an indignant gasp.

“Wait, you knew?! All this time?!” he demanded.

Plagg snorted. “Kid, you’re about as dense as a brick wall. A snail could’ve figured it out faster than you.”

“Rude,” Adrien said, his head still spinning. Ladybug was _Marinette_.

Marinette.

Images of the shy, kind designer flashed before his eyes. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t put two and two together before. Marinette was the nicest, sweetest person that Adrien had ever met. She never hesitated to stand up for anyone who needed it, even if it meant going against people like Chloé and Lila, and she always put the people around her first no matter what the personal cost. She was stubborn to a fault and sometimes acted without thinking, but she was also generous and kind.

Of course she was Ladybug. Plagg was right. Adrien was an idiot.

He gently set the bakery box down on his desk, giving it a more thorough examination. He quickly noticed that it was filled with all his favorite things, and his heart melted at the realization that Ladybug – that _Marinette_ – knew all those things about him. The box was just more proof that she paid attention to him, to both Adrien _and_ Chat. That was the only explanation. 

He had to find her and tell her how much this meant to him. Even with her yoyo, she couldn’t have gotten far. Adrien carefully closed the box and tucked it into the miniature fridge he’d bought to keep Plagg’s cheese in. As tempting as it was to have one of those pastries now, he needed to talk to Ladybug first. 

“Plagg, claws out!”

“I’m not done my cheeeeeeese!” Plagg wailed as he was sucked in.

“Too bad,” Chat told his ring, not feeling even a little bit guilty. He ran to the window and leaped out, extending his baton and using it to propel himself in the same direction that Ladybug had gone.

He didn’t see her, but he thought he knew where she’d gone. The bakery was only a ten minute walk from his house, and it was a much shorter route when you were running across rooftops. Chat took off in the direction of the Dupain-Cheng bakery. His heart started pounding as the bakery came into view and he spotted a familiar, red-suited figure standing on the balcony.

He alighted on the railing and crouched automatically for better balance, staring at her. Her cheeks were pink, but she met his gaze without flinching. Chat mentally catalogued every inch of her: her dark hair tied into the familiar hairstyle, her beautiful blue eyes, the freckles across the bridge of her tiny nose, her pink lips drawn into a shy smile, and couldn’t believe that it had taken him this long to get it.

“You took longer than I thought you would,” Ladybug said. She was trying hard to sound cool, but Chat could tell she was still anxious.

“I think I had a brain freeze,” Chat admitted.

Ladybug’s smile tightened and fell. “That bad, huh?”

He blinked at her for a moment in confusion and then he understood what she meant. Frantically, he shook his head. “No! I just – I feel so dumb for not realizing it before. I called you an ‘Everyday Ladybug’ for crying out loud!”

“Oh. Well, you were technically right,” she said, her smile making a tentative reappearance. 

“Technically,” Chat repeated faintly. “Can I – could I see?”

Ladybug’s blush deepened, but she nodded. “Tikki, spots off!”

Red light zipped up her body, leaving Marinette standing before him in dark blue jeans and a cotton t-shirt. She immediately shivered and grabbed a thick blanket that had been draped over a lawn chair, wrapping it around her shoulders. Tikki landed on her shoulder and waved at Chat. Automatically, somewhat dumbly, he waved back. Part of him had thought this day might never come, and now that it had he was struggling to hold it together.

“I finally found you,” Chat whispered finally.

Marinette smiled. “Actually, I think it’s the other way around. _I_ found _you_.” In the fading light, her eyes twinkled. “And you thought you’d know me right away outside the mask.”

“Yeah, Plagg already pointed out how oblivious I am,” Chat said.

Tikki giggled. “I’m guessing Plagg didn’t phrase it in quite that way. He’s pretty blunt,” she said dryly.

“Uh, no,” Chat said. “Plagg, claws in.”

The same green light flashed around him and Plagg tumbled out of the ring, already sulking. Adrien carefully got down from the railing; his balance was spectacular even as a civilian, but he wasn’t willing to risk a two-story drop when he’d finally found his lady. Doing so put him in much closer proximity to Marinette, and he bit his lip in uncertainty. It didn’t help when their kwamis disappeared inside, leaving them alone.

“I’m guessing I know the answer to this, but are you okay with the fact that this is all out in the open?” Marinette asked. “I probably should’ve talked to you about it first… but once I was done freaking out, I couldn’t help myself.”

Adrien couldn’t help a smile at that. “You freaked out?”

“So much. I never thought you’d be so close,” she admitted. “So… are you mad?”

“No. Not at all. I’m really glad that you told me,” Adrien said. “Thank you for trusting me. I know how important your identity is to you, Marinette. I promise I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t,” she said softly, with another one of those smiles that felt like a shock to Adrien’s core. “I had to tell you. Remember? I promised that we wouldn’t have anymore secrets between us.”

Adrien softened at the memory of her promise, made late one night shortly after they’d faced Syren and Master Fu had come to visit Adrien for the first time. In an impulsive moment, Chat had confessed to Ladybug that he had nearly given up his miraculous out of frustration over being kept in the dark. Ladybug had been completely horrified, to a point that still surprised Adrien even now. She’d vowed to him that, identities aside, there would never be anymore secrets between them.

“You did, and you kept your promise. Thank you,” he said again. He knew she could’ve easily kept this secret, and he would’ve understood if she had: this was about more than them. Marinette valued her family and friends and would do anything to keep them safe. That she placed their relationship and her promise over that was staggering and made him feel warm from head to toe. 

He’d always known he would gladly die for her, but that kind of trust made him want to live for her. 

“You’re welcome, Adrien.” She hesitated, then held her arms out in an unspoken query. 

Adrien closed the distance between them in a flash, burrowing into her arms and wrapping his arms around her. She made a small, startled ‘oof’ at the impact, but quickly hugged him back. She smelled like fresh vanilla and cinnamon. It was a delicious scent that Adrien had come to associate with Ladybug; in retrospect, it was probably a good thing that he and Marinette had never gotten close enough for him to smell her, because it was a dead give away.

He wanted to tell her that he loved her – maybe now she would believe him when he said it – but somehow, he knew it wasn’t the right moment. Everything was still too fresh. Too new. They both needed time to adjust, much as he hated to admit that to himself. But soon.

“Can I stay for a while?” he asked, knowing it was rude to invite himself over, but not particularly caring. The thought of going back to his empty room, even with the delicious pastries Marinette had bought him, was unappealing.

“Sure. We can play video games if you want,” Marinette said. 

“Really?” His eyes lit up and he straightened up, pulling back just enough to beam at her.

“Really,” she confirmed with a soft giggle. “If you’re ready to get your butt kicked, that is.”

“I am always ready for that,” Adrien said with a sage nod, which earned him another giggle. They parted simultaneously, as though just realizing that they were still hugging, shooting each other shy smiles and affectionate looks that spoke volumes.

Someday soon, Adrien thought contentedly, and followed his lady inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](https://tsuki-chibi.tumblr.com/).


End file.
